Sunday, November 10, 2013

Ghost in the House! / The Other Man

People are screaming at me for more Atlas, so here ya go-- a Joe Maneely and TonyDiPreta double header of weirdness from the October 1952 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds #11 to be exact. And FYI: the next post will contain the two remaining stories from this issue as I hope to get the entire thing posted this weeeek! After you finish today's post though, check out the crazy cool Larry Woromay story from this issue that I posted way back in May 2008 by clicking HERE!

4 comments:

Paranoia! "They are all in on it but me!" Since the dead presumably don't need to do séances it must have been a set-up to get the reporter.

I'm reminded of an incident that allegedly happened about 20 years ago that was reported to the late UFO abduction investigator Budd Hopkins by the four witnesses. It was published in Hopkins' book Sight Unseen. The founder of a UFO abduction support group received a phone call inviting him to speak at another group that functioned in a neighboring town. The group founder, his partner an their respective wives went to the address given. It was a new group of condominium apartments only some of which were occupied. They were received by a strange, "blank-looking", rather short man who didn't seem to know them. Inside there were four or five people. There were no pictures on the wall, magazines or books, just chairs and a sofa. There were no introductions, no food or beverage offered. The people had no social skills, no body language, no interests or curiosity, no emotion, "zombie-like". One of the women was extremely beautiful to the point of seeming doll-like, but severe-looking. The host started berating the invitees for making a video about their UFO experiences. It turned out that he was not affiliated to any UFO organizations and didn't know any UFO investigator. Suddenly the beautiful woman stood up and transformed into an incredibly hideous creature with huge eyes and sparse hair. That's when the invitees ran away, piled into their car and took off. According to all four witnesses none of the other people in the apartment "looked right". Maybe they were wearing masks, like in the story!

I didn't see the twist coming on the second story! So Bartok grew a second head and his consciousness would transfer from one to the other. The problem is that now he was more recognizable than ever!

Oh Stan! Great ending, silly but well-played and with the good misdirection of the hellscape.

Maneely, what a talent. The first story was a lot of talking heads, but Maneely didn't just glide by, there's lot of crazy (good) camera angles, lighting, just real amazing craft.

The second story is fun, and I always like DiPreta's scratchy work, but it's somewhat of a bridge to far with the ending. Still heads and tails above most other pre-code work. The being shot sequence is great.

Maneely is so great. Panel four on page two would look so great as a nice porcelain pattern or stamped in two colors onto a cloth-bound hardback. And all of page three is the kind of great, garish precode wonderment that still makes me squirm in my seat after all these years.

That said, or maybe because of that, the DiPreta work here--especially when I looked at it reduced in the thumbnails--really comes off fresh and spectacular. I love his very open and loose gestural style, and he must have had access to a pretty vast array of different brush sizes, too.

Your Horrible Host of Horrors

(aka Steve Banes) Editor / co-editor of IDW's Chilling Archives of Horror Comic Books: ZOMBIES, RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES, and DEVIL TALES, as well as co-host of the bi-monthly HAUNTED HORROR comic series and HAUNTED LOVE miniseries. (All image scans and photography by me from items found in my own personal, putrid collection-- except where noted.)

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